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A Camper's Perspective

By Aidan Morton-Ninomiya, grade 9 student from St. Jacobs Mennonite Church

When the idea of OMMC was pitched to me at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate, I was immediately excited. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I got there, I knew it would be awesome.

In the hallway, there was the plan for the two weeks of camp, describing what we’d be doing every hour of every day for the next twelve days. Each day started with a chapel full of all the best hymns, and was followed by and hour and a half of masterclass, where I had my first experience of musical improvisation, and got to learn so much about different kind of music, not only from my instructors, but also from the incredibly musically talented campers at OMMC.

We’d later have lunch in the Grebel cafeteria, where I had my first Grebel cookie, and it did not disappoint. After that we had recreation, where we did activities ranging from classic tag, to having to chase our counselors around and try to smash an egg taped to their arm. We got practice time after that to practice our own music or for the upcoming concerts either by ourselves or with friends.

One of my favorite parts of camp though was the groups that we met up with after supper. We read some scripture, and then discussed it with a small group of maybe five or six, where some of the best conversations I’ve ever had happened. Campfire was always a great experience, where we got to sing these wonderful songs that most of us knew by heart, and occasionally had one counselor’s reflections of their own lives, which was something we, as young teenagers had the opportunity to listen to and get good advice about our lives, spiritually or socially.

Now, OMMC is not just advice and scripture! It’s also a whole camp lip dub! We started learning the lyrics to “You make My Dreams Come True”, and later that day filmed the whole thing in our 80s outfits, and ending with a shot of all of us in the Grebel chapel full of balloons everywhere! It was awesome!

We had many performances, the best of which was the final performance, where we performed Jesus Christ Superstar, which is my friend -Micah Neufeld- and my favourite musical and it was so fun! I also got to perform a musical improvisation, only about eight days after having done it for the first time!

Now, I say hi to all the people I met at OMMC if I see them at church or choir or school, or maybe just at the store! I still talk with my friends about all the fun things I’ve done at OMMC, and I’m totally going to go back every year I can until I get too old!